


All These Odds

by romanticalgirl



Category: Homicide: Life on the Street
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-01-01
Packaged: 2017-12-05 07:24:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/720386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romanticalgirl/pseuds/romanticalgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>And your strength is devastating in the face of all these odds</i> / <i>Remember how I kept you waiting when it was finally my turn to play the god?</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	All These Odds

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [](http://inlovewithnight.livejournal.com/profile)[**inlovewithnight**](http://inlovewithnight.livejournal.com/) for the beta. This is a very delayed fic request dating back to August, 2006. Thanks also to [](http://likeadeuce.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://likeadeuce.livejournal.com/)**likeadeuce** for figuring out names for me and saving me from the spoiler-filled world of wikipedia. Also, I've only seen through S3, so please don't spoil me.
> 
> Originally posted 7-17-08

Kay Howard is a detective.

Even before she’s a woman or a friend or a fuck, she’s a detective. It’s who she is, it’s what she is. She won’t apologize for it, and she doesn’t regret it. Before she could read or write or pitch nets over the side of the boat, she was figuring things out, finding things. She knew the secrets people wanted kept hidden, and she mostly didn’t say anything. She never used the things she knew to her advantage and she never once let anyone get away with anything that wasn’t what it should be.

People think Homicide is a sick joke – a bunch of people with some sort of death fetish who like looking at bodies with their faces missing or burned beyond recognition, a group that likes seeing all the worst in humanity come out to play in some sick, twisted little game of one-upmanship. Frank Pembleton put it best, that they’re avenging the dead, giving them a voice when they can no longer speak for themselves, but there are other things. Sometimes in the people she sees in the morgue, she sees herself. She sees the girl she might have been, the old lady she’ll never grow up to be. She sees a daughter and a mother and a wife and a lover, and there’s nothing that says it couldn’t be her except the gun and badge she carries that give her the illusion of safety.

The house is empty, but it’s not. It’s filled with bodies. The house is dark, but it’s not. It’s a cacophony of colors from the black and whites outside, the lights blinding them all with red and blue, and the photographs being snapped in four different rooms. The house is quiet, but it’s not. Somewhere, someone is crying.

Kay’s almost afraid for a moment that it’s her.

“Detective Howard!”

She moves past the mess in the living room and goes into the kitchen. There’s macaroni and cheese on the stove, congealed in the pot. Another pot has an inch of slimy water in it, the hot dogs greasy and turning a sick grayish-green. Underneath the table, huddled in a ball, is Zack. He’s splattered with blood, dried tears staining his face. He’s too dehydrated to cry, though the hoarse sounds are coming from him. He’s shaking uncontrollably, sitting in a pool of his own excrement and urine.

“Four days, Kay,” Bayliss murmurs from somewhere behind her and she nods, reaching out a hand to the little boy. Zack gives a full body shudder and starts to scream and the sound rings through the house and makes everyone start. “We need a doctor in here,” Bayliss calls out and two EMTs come running. Kay backs away and the screaming stops, replaced with wordless sobs that eventually end as one of the EMTs gives Zack a shot and they move him out of the house.

Kay straightens and blows out a breath. Allie is here, lying on the ground like a broken doll. There’s a shattered bowl of baby food on the ground beside her, dried to hard lumps of cement-like consistency. “Jesus, Bayliss.”

Tim nods and keeps staring down at her, seeming unable to look away. Kay thinks about Adina Watson for a minute and gets it, maybe. Tim’s got a problem with little girls dying, more than the rest of them. Kay leaves him there and moves down the hall to the bedrooms. The nursery is cool and dark, darker than the rest of the house. A few phantom strains of a lullaby fill the quiet for a moment as the photographer inadvertently knocks the mobile as he leans over to take another picture.

It’s inhuman what people do to other people, Kay knows. Everyone has a capacity for evil in them that lingers, threatening under the surface. It’s what fuels suspicion even of the people closest. There’s darkness inside everyone. Sometimes it’s manifested in acts, sometimes in deeds. Sometimes it’s bled out in a shotgun spray that turns the most innocent of rooms into a horror show, skin and bone and baby powder on the floor with ragged shoe prints in high relief in the sticky mess it leaves behind.

Beth is in the master bathroom. Kay wants to save her for last or, better yet, save her for Bayliss, but she can’t. She has to do this herself, has to see for herself. Beth was always fond of dramatic gestures and Kay’s far too familiar with them all from the years of being partners. Lipstick scrawls and cut up clothes, sexy lingerie and temper tantrums that all lead to walking out and walking away for long enough to turn Beau into a bigger mess than normal, just to come back and start it all over again.

The gun is propped against the wall still, waiting on photographs. There’s no need, but it’s protocol. The questions have been answered for a long time, since the call first came in, since the address came over the phone. Still, she has to see it all. Long, silvery shards of glass on the floor all around Beth’s nylon-clad legs, like fringe on her white eyelet skirt. Her make-up is perfect and Kay can hear the funeral home director in her head. _She looks like she’s sleeping_ , only they never look like they’re sleeping to Kay. They look like they’re dead.

The closed half of the coffin will hide the long gashes in Beth’s arms, Kay’s sure of that. “You always were vain, weren’t you, Beth?” She stares at her for a long moment then squats down. Her hands are sweating inside her gloves and she can smell the hint of powder that means she’s been wearing them too long, that she won’t be able to wash the smell off for days. “Blow them to fucking pieces, but you’re pretty as a picture.” The urge to grab one of those pieces of glass and gouge Beth’s face is nearly overwhelming, almost a physical need. “Never happy unless it was all about you.”

She forces herself to her feet and moves back into the main room of the house. Bayliss is in the corner talking to Scheiner. She can see it all in her head like a movie, a slow moving ballet without sound. Allie was first. The baby was probably crying and Beth begged Allie to take her some food, probably a bottle, but Allie wanted to help, so she’d made cereal and the baby had kept crying and crying and crying. Beau was late, dinner wasn’t ready and there was only so much. Only so much she could take.

Beau kept the shotgun in the pantry on the shelf up above the water heater. Kay had bitched at him endlessly about the safety issue, and he swore it was fine. The kids couldn’t reach it so they were safe and Beth knew where it was in case she needed it. Beth had needed it, but the kids hadn’t been safe. No one had.

Allie was first and then the baby. Had Zack come in late? Had he been outside and heard the shot? Had he seen it all? Had Beth not known where he was or was he silent enough that she didn’t care? Kay can’t place him in the events, and it’s the only thing that bothers the _detective_ , everything else bothers her.

Beau had come in the door and called out a hello. He was slightly tipsy from a beer or two at the Waterfront, and late as usual. No one answered and he could smell the powder, the sulfur lingering in the air. He started to draw his gun, but it was too late. The entrance wound is small, but the exit one is large, his spine shattered like the glass in the bathroom. Kay can hear the roar of the gun, can picture the surprised look on Beau’s face. His blood is embedded in the new white carpet, and Kay can’t help but wonder if Beth had all this in mind from the start.

The bathroom was next to take the coward’s way out. It was always so easy for Beth to destroy Beau. She never needed a gun. She had three weapons that could wound him more than bullet she could find, but apparently that wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough to go somewhere when there was a possibility of him finding her, wasn’t enough to run when there was a chance he might still need _her_.

“Kay?”

She looks up at Bayliss and it isn’t until his fingers graze her cheek that she realizes she’s crying. She shakes her head, too far beyond words to know what to say and he nods, and she knows he understands. She leans on him for a moment and then takes a deep breath, exhaling it slowly, shakily. “I’m all right.”

“You sure?”

She nods and looks up at him, offering him the closest she can get to a smile. Scheiner nods at her and she starts snapping orders, letting the medical examiner’s staff take the bodies. She leaves the scene, leaves Bayliss in charge of the clean up and heads back to the station, walking up to the whiteboard and erasing Felton’s name from the top and writing it carefully under hers in black.  



End file.
